Welcome to Barely Legal: The Blog; This blog is run by two recent law school grads, Russ and Mike. Back when we were still law students, this was the most popular law student run blog in the world. Now, who knows what we are or what this blog is. Nevertheless, everything on this blog is uncontroverted fact, and should be interpreted as such.

Wednesday, May 17, 2006

Not too long ago...

...I was discussing a particular baseball player, and his relative attributes and skills, with a friend. He asserted, with absolutely no evidence or reason, that said player was the best in the league. I tried to get him to back this bold statement up, and he couldn't, other than saying "I don't know why, but I just know. It's just a feeling." His enthusiasm was unquestioned but his methodology was deeply flawed, which reminded me of this story...

Way back when I was just a lowly second-semester 1L, still entertaining thoughts of becoming an attorney and practicing law and such, I decided to respond to a job posting that was looking for a 1L for the summer. The posting said that a writing sample was required, and I deemed one of the papers that I had written for legal writing (a motion to do something or to block something, I don't quite recall) worthy of becoming my writing sample. I received a 'B+' grade on this motion, so I decided to take it to my legal writing instructor for some guidance as to how I could improve upon it.

I scheduled a meeting with him and arrived five minutes early, armed with two copies of my motion so we could go over it together, and I could make notes on my copy. Naturally, he wasn't in his office. I took a seat and waited. Twenty minutes later, after thumbing through an old copy of the law review and some legal magazine that had been on his desk, I was ready to leave. Just then, he burst into the office, and looked at me with the sort of suspicious eyes that a homeowner would use on some unruly teenagers standing outside of his house with a carton of eggs. "Can I help you?", he said in an accusing tone.

"Yeah, we had a meeting scheduled," I said. Then I realized he had no idea who I was, despite the fact that I was currently in his class, which had only about 15 students in it. "My name is Mike [Last Name], I'm in legal writing with you right now. I wanted to go over my motion with you so I can use it as a writing sample. We had a meeting scheduled to start 20 minutes ago..."

"Oh yeah," he said, clearly having forgotten ever scheduling a meeting with me, despite the fact I had done it via email two days earlier. "I'd be happy to help." I handed him my motion and said, "You gave me a B+, which is fine, I just want to know what I can do to improve it a little." He took about five minutes to read through the 15-page paper, handed it back to me and said, "I don't know, it looks pretty good to me."

"Well then," I said, "Why did I only get a B+?"

He paused, and sighed, and said, "Well, when I grade a paper, I look for some certain content, which is part of the grade, but for the most part, the grade is based on an overall 'feel', if that makes sense." I said that it didn't, so he continued. "Your motion was good, really good actually, but it just didn't feel like an A paper. And I'm not really sure what you could have done to make it an A paper, unless you completely started over."

This is where the me of two years ago differs from the me of today. If this happened today, I'd have told this professor exactly what I thought of his ridiculous grading system, explained how holisitc grading is a farce, a lazy method of assigning grades which are extremely important to some people, how he is cheating his students, and so on. But the me of two years ago bit his tongue, and let all those thoughts stay in my head.

I stood up to leave, and thanked him for his time. Walking away from his office, I decided that when course evaluations were passed out, I'd rate this professor as "poor", because, for the most part, he just felt like a bad professor.